Checkmate mummy.....well not quite!

[stupar]

Having a wee play around tonight with still life and flash and came up with this from the wife's Egyptian chess set.
Mono looked better over colour as the pieces are a dull silver and bronze colour whilst the board is a mahogany brown colour however there is a blue tinge on the background that shows quite strong against a pure white background so I may revisit and tweak accordingly.

Happy to hear your thoughts and thanks for stopping by

Egyption Chess by Stuart Pardue, on Flickr

 

[Harlequin565]

Really nice carefully composed image IMO.

I dearly love the straightness of it and would perhaps like to see the corners of the chess table but appreciate this may create dead space on the edges of the image. The super-widescreen crop works to a degree. I guess a more normal crop just had a ton of space over the top and you didn't like it?

 

[Norkie]

I'd prefer to see the pieces at the front of the board, the caste pieces, in focus, and I think I would prefer a border to the whole image.

 

[stupar]

Really nice carefully composed image IMO.

I dearly love the straightness of it and would perhaps like to see the corners of the chess table but appreciate this may create dead space on the edges of the image. The super-widescreen crop works to a degree. I guess a more normal crop just had a ton of space over the top and you didn't like it?

Thanks for commenting Ian, it's more of a chess box than a table so I cropped to cut out what would otherwise be distracting elements (print on the box), I could have gone for a normal crop and had the dead space but i the white card I was using as a backdrop wasn't wide enough. If I can find a larger background i will re shoot it and give it breathing space at the sides.

I'd prefer to see the pieces at the front of the board, the caste pieces, in focus, and I think I would prefer a border to the whole image.

Thanks Jak for your comment. I shot at f5 to give some isolation to the advancing Anubis. However as per my comment to Ian above I am going to re shoot the scene with a wider background and when I do I will look at bring focus to the front of the board too and re-post the result.

This will let you see what the box looks like and why I cropped the way I did

 

[Cunobelin]

Great shot!

More curiosity than critique, but I wonder what it would look like at approx 30 to 45 degrees (along the same plane)?

 

[Kell]

I think it's interesting that you went for B&W rather than look to bring out the differences in the colours of the opposing pieces. At the moment it looks like they're all part of the same side/team/army (I've just realised that I don't know what you call them).

In terms of cropping, I don't think going wider would bring much to the image, but I do think seeing that it's two sides would. And for me I think it works that the focus is not on the rooks. Though it would be interesting to see how it would compare doing front focus, current focus and rear focus.

All in my humble opinion of course.